Amazon and its cloud computing outage: Next time it rains, will it pour?
Amazon’s cloud computing services went down for at least several hours over the weekend—just as the bookstore had earlier? Didn’t we warn you? Will a long enough outrage cost Amazon big, in S3 customer retention.
Web-browsable e-books have a place but this should not be the only model. We need to own books for real and not worry about providers’ outrages. I know Bill Janssen at PARC is keen on this-here remote access, and I’d be curious to see what he has to say.
Where Bill and I agree: The usefulness of the iPhone as an e-book reader. He has done a good job of comparing the iPhone with the Kindle.
Related: Smaller PCs cause worry for industry, in the New York Times. A $300 desktop, debuting today, will rely at least in part on the cloud computing idea. Power consumption is just two watts, perhaps 1/50th of the usual desktops. Environmentally, then, in terms of reducing local CPU and storage requirements, cloud computing has its definite pros. But what if someday Washington uses cloud computing’s centralized nature to assert yet more power over citizens?
July 21st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
FYI: The free WordPress.com service uses amazon S3 to store all the multimedia files (audio, video, JPEGs) people put in their blogs. My blog was without JPEGs for most the day while S3 was down. Some blogs are *nothing but* photos. Some by pro photogs who use them as online portfolios to show clients!
July 21st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
“Power consumption is just two watts, perhaps 1/50th of the usual desktops. Environmentally, then, in terms of reducing local CPU and storage requirements, cloud computing has its definite pros. But what if someday Washington uses cloud computing’s centralized nature to assert yet more power over citizens?”
Ugh. What people need is to put a server in the basement (which is cheap to do these days) and then use these cheap computers as clients. That’s what I’m doing with my kids…getting them each one of those shuttle kpc desktops with Linux…Internet+local fire server FTW.
July 21st, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Brian, what a great idea. I hope you’ll update us on how that approach with your kids works out. Might be a nice little TeleBlog post. A little off-topic but still of interest. Thanks. David
July 21st, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Yes, for any household with 3+ computer users, the server and clients is the way to go.
As for the power savings, we have to remember that monitors burns watts, too.
And the ‘cloud’ is a problem for government control, indeed. The US government is already snooping on an incredible amount of world internet traffic, thanks to the way so much traffic is routed through the US. It looks like a race between Big Brother spying and rolling blackouts and loadshedding to see which will sink Web 3.0 first.
It’s too bad. The future was nice while it lasted, eh?
But where’s my jet pack? And my flying car? And my cheap ebook reader?